Just for the sake of accuracy – Vella went for Mintoff’s blessing. At that stage there was no contest for leadership. Mintoff’s reply was ‘jien qatt ma bierikt gdur’.

Dan il-gvern GAB, mhux tani, opportunitajiet godda u serhan tal-mohh biex illum jien qeghda nghix hajja dicenti.

Dan il-gvern lili ma tani XEJN hlief il-liberta LURA li hadli sidek Duminku Mintoff. Il-ftit jew wisq li ghandi illum huwa biss mertu tieghi ghax hdimt u irsistejt ghalih jien, u jien BISS.

Partit ma jittellghax fil-gvern biex jaghti. Partit jittellgha fil-gvern biex imexxi pajjiz fid-direzzjoni it-tajba.

Simon, jekk inti trid mhux daqshekk difficli tbiddel il-mentalita tieghek. Tghallem ahseb b’mohhok u uza is-sens komun. U jirnexxilek.

Daphne,

My reactions to your reaction:

“Who in God’s name told you that you went to school and to university only because of Mintoff?”

MC: Whoever mentioned the word ‘only’? I am also grateful that the PN carried on on the excellent work Mintoff started, but it is an indelible fact that only Labour governments cared for the poor and downtrodden as my widowed grandmother and fatherless mother were, post-WWII, as also most people from the inner harbour area, from where I hail.

“Ask yourself why I went to university in 1993 instead of in 1982.”

MC: I did ask myself that question a number of times in that Archaeology Farmhouse lecture room, across the table from you, and I assumed, as much as you are now assuming about my life, that you were too busy reproducing in your twenties to realise the value of furthering your education. Ooooooooh! Am I being too blunt?

[Daphne – UNBELIEVABLE! No, I mean really, un-fucking-believable. Do you mean to say that you have missed every single newspaper report or account of the situation at the university under the Labour government. Do you even know how people GOT IN to university? Do you know that there was NO Faculty of the Arts, no Bachelor of Arts courses and therefore, no archaeology course? Do you know that your hero Mintoff CLOSED DOWN THE FACULTY OF ARTS because, he said, the degree is useless and you can all become teachers instead?

If you think I didn’t go to university because I was having children at 18, you’re cracked. I had my first child at 21. Had I lived in a fucking – excuse my language but people like you are absolutely insufferable in your determined ignorance – I could have easily fitted in a degree in between sixth form and my first child. Three years, right? And I actually sat my A-levels at 17, not 18, anyway. You really are hopeless you know, and you might have sat across from me for four years, but I haven’t a clue who are. That’s the amazing impression you made. If you were scintillating, I might have noticed. I certainly remember all the bright ones. Tal-biki.]

“If you think that was a big funeral, you should have seen Il-Fusellu’s.”

MC: It is cheap to compare funerals.

[Daphne – It’s called irony. I’m guessing there isn’t much of that in your Mintoffian household. It’s a foreign concept.]

FYI:

Most of my colleagues at work are PN supporters and they know my leanings are social democratic and they respect me as much as I respect them. We also feast each other’s achievements because that is what true comradeship should be like – an exchange of opinions not an exchange of insults.

[Daphne – Social democrat? And you vote Labour? You’re with the wrong party. And anyway, God knows how you worked out that Labour is social democrat, because we haven’t seen a single policy to speak of. But oh wait, they TELL you they’re social democrat. So that’s all right then, no need to look at the evidence. God, I wonder how you got through your archaeology degree without examining evidence. And another thing, it’s fete, not feast.]

But … ‘nough said … it is my mistake – I should have never posted on your vile hatred-disseminating blog, prying into and preying onto other people’s lives, whilst assuming that your life is better than everybody else’s. There is certainly no fine line between freedom of speech and freedom to insult: both a quite clear and totally distinct.

What a pity! I remember you in much better days, when your writings were so much more inspiring even if just to listen and read to your good mastery of the English language. Now it is just trash.

But curiosity killed the cat … and I should have continued to ignore your blog, as I shall exactly be doing right after this full stop.

[Daphne – You know, the thing your incursion here has taught me – not that I didn’t know it before really – is how you can be sitting across from a Mintoffjan ahdar/hadra for four long bleeding years, conducting normal conversations, while they conceal their true nature and sentiments. Growing up where I did taught me that Mintoffiani are like snakes in the grass, slithering around pretending to be something else so as to be socially acceptable. On balance, I prefer the fox kem andek variety of loud and in your face Mintoffjani. At least they’re not pretending to be anything else.]

@maltawarrior

Thank God, mhux mis-sema injoranta u biased li waqajt minnha int.

Go get a life … and a new nom de plum at that!

[Daphne – Nom de plum. Lovely.]

we don’t know what the future brings Mr Montebello, hopefully not what the early eighties were and violence did stop over the years, thanks to EFA and also to Alfred Sant and Joseph Muscat who have both disagreed with it and stopped it, you must see that. Violence nowadays takes a more subtle form you should see that too.

And HPsauce, I have been in this blog for a week, and it’s shocking. So I will stop coming here. There is a load of hate here. People don’t need to discuss things this way. This is another form of violence.

I couldn’t agree more. Somehow, Mintoff’s death unleashed in me all the repressed feelings I lived through throughout my childhood all those years ago. Seeing him again on television, hearing the word “Mintoff” so many times, reading it in print, seeing how tragically wrongly history was being re-written, I felt a deep, a very deep desire to run about in the streets shouting: wake up! The emperor is naked. Wake up! We’re being taken for a ride. Open your eyes. Le m’ghamilx gid – he ruined our country, he ruined his own party. He was a tyrant, a dictator. He despised us all.”

I still need to go on a high point and shout this out. Yet, people like Joseph Muscat say that this was a “tislima ta’ poplu”. I boycotted Mintoff’s funeral and spent the day on the beach instead, ostentatiously posting pictures of the beach on FB to show that “no, to me that funeral is not happening. I couldn’t give two hoots”.

I don’t want to give a “tislima” to a dictator who ruined my family’s life and almost succeeded in ruining mine. I refused to go and see his lying in state and, above all, nobody has the right to rope me in with the “poplu” giving the “tislima”.

And no, it’s not a matter of letting bygones be bygones because if they really were bygones, we shouldn’t sit here and shudder at the thought of yet another election with its possibility of yet another Labour government which is clearly Not Fit for the Purposes. This is all Mintoff’s doing and I can never pay respects to a man who trampled on us, our rights, our happiness.

Hmieg ta’ Malta li harab mil-Maghtab, jimporta nindirizzak hekk?

Minn kliemek nista nimmagina li nhaseb li mhux qieghed il-boghod.

Li tghid dak il-kumment wegga lili personali li ja jien Nazzjonalist u lanqas Laburist.

Jien wiehed innocenti li kont hemm u kwazi qatluni bis swat il-pulizija. Jien kont sejjer lura id-dar wara il-quddiesa.

Spiccajt kwazi mejjet li ma kienx ghal min ghinni u hadd il-kura l-Ingilterra ghax l-isptar baghtuni id-dar bid-demm fuq mohhi u emorogija interna bid-daqqiet.

Li kieku…. eh, li kieku jittrattawk hekk ghax tghid li trid tghid f’pajjiz demokratiku, kieku m’ghanekx computer id-dar, u ommok ghada tara ir-repeats ta’ Id-dar Tas-Soru.

Mintoff kien manipulatur, bully u inkompetenti.

Li ghamel hu seta ghamlu pulitikant iehor b’nofs l-intelligenza tieghu, b’dinjita’, rispett, ghaqal, inqas tbatija u iktar success.

Malta qieghda ghoxrin sa tletin sena lura mil-bqija ta l-Ewropa…. l-ekwivalenti ta’ zmien Mintoff fil-poter.

Imma zomm . . . ma ndunajtx? Skuzani. Insejt li int ghadek hemm.

Issa, meta jhalluk tohrog minghajr chaperone, forsi tinduna.

Mur hudu f’ghoxx Mintoff, Lorry Sant, KMB u l-hodor, l-injoranti u il-hmieg u d-dlam li tinsab fih.

Learn about life, moron.

And read from back to front, too.

Sadly, many of them predeceased him.

Well, that’s what one Mrs Bondin could possibly claim.